By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Are you over 75?
–You remember the children paralyzed with polio wearing crutches?
–Some adult polio victims were in “iron lungs” in order to continue breathing.
–Parks and swimming pools were closed to control the spread.
–We left our lights on at night so the mothers’ “March of Dimes” could come collect what little we could spare to contribute to research.
–The Jonas Salk polio vaccine was finally released. We were so relieved!
Elimination of a major disease using vaccination had already occurred with smallpox. Both smallpox and polio are caused by viruses that, unlike the seasonal flu or COVID-19, do not evolve major variants. Thanks to vaccination, the last case of smallpox in the U.S. was in 1949. Worldwide vaccination and quarantine brought an end to smallpox in the wild in the 1970s in Somalia, Africa.
The small, southwest Kansas town of Protection was the first in the nation to be fully immunized against polio. Elimination of polio worldwide should have occurred a decade ago, except for the mistaken belief by the Taliban that the vaccine was an attempt at sterilization. Polio may now be more difficult to drive to extinction. But the major problem with continuing vaccination and the world benefitting from huge numbers of lives being saved is the vaccination ignorance that has grown recently in the United States. Accelerated in the shadow of the recent pandemic, we have seen politics and medical ignorance overwhelm science and our history with smallpox and polio.
Across the country, bills are being written and passed that are guaranteeing a rise in infectious diseases that are completely preventable. Most dangerous are those bills that undermine the vaccine requirements for youngsters attending school. Kansas SB 20 is one such bill.
The CDC website provides a map that links to each state’s vaccination-for-school requirements. Current common school vaccine requirements include: Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis (DtaP/Tdap); Hepatitis A (Hep A); Hepatitis B (Hep B); Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR); Meningococcal serogroups; Poliomyelitis (IPV/tOPV); Varicella (Chickenpox) and others.
For decades, the health of American schoolchildren has been much better because of the far lower levels, and in some cases total elimination, of these diseases. But not every child can be vaccinated due to medical reasons. A small number are immuno-compromised, being unable to develop the vaccine’s protection and being especially vulnerable to infections. Therefore it becomes more important that classmates around them are vaccinated so they will not carry the diseases to their weaker classmate.
The number of students who need to be vaccinated to protect their vulnerable classmate varies by the contagion rate. If on average an infected person spreads a disease to three others, the basic reproductive number (called R naught) is three. This R number varies, depending on whether others are immune due to prior exposure or vaccination. Contagion of various diseases varies: Ebola outbreak in Congo (1.5–2.5), HIV/AIDS (2–5), Mumps (4–7) and Measles (12–18).
With measles having such a high rate of contagion, that means that the vaccination rate needs to be above 95 percent to protect our vulnerable students. Measles was officially eradicated in the United States, but it is now back with a vengeance as the vaccination rate of children in some regions dropped well below 95 percent. And measles can be deadly. Now young science-illiterate legislators want to weaken the ability of schools to keep their students safe by implementing laws that prevent K-12 schools from checking the rationale of parents who want their child excluded from vaccination for non-medical reasons. Some want to deny universities the right to require meningitis or other vaccinations.
If you are older than 75, you remember the ravages of whooping cough, the deaths from German measles, the children on crutches and adults in iron lungs from polio. You saw your children and grandchildren live far better lives because of a half century of vaccination. But the widespread efforts of younger state legislators today to reduce vaccination exceeds the ignorance of the Taliban. If we are to save our great-grandchildren’s generation, some young legislators need a “talking to.”
. . .
CDC: School Vaccination Requirements and Exemptions
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/coverage/schoolvaxview/requirements/index.html
Kansas Senate Bill 20http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2023_24/measures/documents/sb20_00_0000.pdf
. . .
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities during 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.